Poems

Borderlands

Through all the evening,All the virginal long evening,Down the blossomed aisle of April it is dread to walk alone;For there the intangible is nigh, the lost is ever-during;And who would suffer again beneath a too divine alluring,Keen as the ancient drift of sleep on dying faces blown?

Yet in the valley,At a turn of the orchard alley,When a wild aroma touched me in the moist and moveless air,Like breath indeed from out Thee, or as airy vesture round Thee,Then was it I went faintly, for fear I had nearly found Thee,O Hidden, O Perfect, O Desired! O first and final Fair!

This poem is in the public domain.

Guiney, a poet, essayist, literary critic, and biographer, was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1861.

About This Poem

More by Louise Imogen Guiney

What sacramental hurt that brings
The terror of the truth of things
Had changed thee? Secret be it yet.
’T was thine, upon a headland set,
To view no isles of man’s delight,
With lyric foam in rainbow flight,
But all a-swing, a-gleam, mid slow uproar,
Black sea, and curved uncouth sea-bitten shore.

Beyond the cheat of Time, here where you died, you live;
You pace the garden walk, secure and sensitive;
You linger on the stair: Love’s lonely pulses leap!
The harpsichord is shaken, the dogs look up from sleep.
Here, after all the years, you keep the heirdom still;
The youth and joy in you achieve their olden will,
Unbidden, undeterred, with waking sense adored;
And still the house is happy that hath so dear a lord.
To every inmate heart, confirmed in cheer you brought,
Your name is as a spell midway of speech and thought,
And to a wonted guest (not awestruck heretofore),
The sunshine that was you floods all the open door.

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses
All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses,
All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.
Let cowards and laggards fall back! but alert to the saddle
Weather-worn and abreast, go men of our galloping legion,
With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him.
The trail is through dolour and dread, over crags and morasses;
There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us:What odds? We are Knights of the Grail, we are vowed to the riding.
Thought’s self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb,
And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sunbeam:
Not here is our prize, nor, alas! after these our pursuing.
A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle,
A passing salute to this world and her pitiful beauty:
We hurry with never a word in the track of our fathers.
(I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses
All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses,
All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.)
We spur to a land of no name, out-racing the storm-wind;
We leap to the infinite dark like sparks from the anvil.
Thou leadest, O God! All’s well with Thy troopers that follow.